Now I was told that cable cards can't get those channels, you have to have the comcast box.

Which is a lie or a response from an ignorant rep, of course. The only channel(s) you can't get are OnDemand - every other channel is accessible with a CC (and possibly a tuning adapter depending on your area).

2 techs have come out and I still don't have all my channels. It's the darndest thing. I get up to channel 118 but nothing higher and none of my encore channels. I get the major network HD channels but no ESPN HD etc that are a part of my package

Somewhat similar situation for me. I'm local to the Lebanon NH office and the best the tech was able to do for my TiVo HD was put in an M CC and get a few of the HD channels in the 760-790 range to come up. But not ESPN HD, Golf Channel HD, etc. The HD 70x local stations are OK.

Since he was a contractor he decided to escalate to Comcast and supposedly they are calling or visiting tomorrow. I will try to find out exactly what they do to get it working.

OK, all fixed. Last night I ran through the TiVo troubleshooting and everything checked out. The Comcast tech this was escalated to showed up by 10AM, popped his signal meter on the line and about 10 minutes later pronounced "The installer left the Basic Cable block on your line." Good news, I said, that explains the missing channel pattern and the fact that billing has everything right. However, the tech yesterday told me he checked the pole before coming to the house -- I'd warned him we were only getting Basic until now. The tech says "The meter tells me its a block, I'll go to the pole." 10 minutes later he's back and says "Looking from the street you couldn't see the block because it was in a non-standard position. But as soon as I climbed up I saw it plainly. Here it is." And all the channels were working fine, with no further ado.

She reports that the installer openly admitted he had no Cablecard experience; therefore he followed the instructions sheet she handed him to the letter. The install went off without a hitch, and took less than 1/2 hour start to finish.

Per the Comcast website, there is no charge for her first (and only) Cablecard.

She will therefore SAVE $3-$4 PER MONTH vs. using the "crappy Comcast DVR" (her words).

Hi all. I'm doing a lot of reading, but thought I would post here to see if anyone had any tips. I'm using Tivo HD.

Comcast came out yesterday to do an Motorola M-card install. It took just 5 minutes and we were in business. I thought great considering all the stories on here.

I tried to keep the guy so I could check my channels, but he insisted on spot checking a few and declared his job done and ran out the door. After he left, it appears a lot of channels are missing. I called phone support and they're sending out a tech Friday.

Just wondering if people had any pointers. The tech that was here said he does 1-2 CableCard installs a year and never did a Tivo, so I'm anticipating I'll know more than the next guy.

I have Digital Preferred package, and lets use FoodNetwork HD and Travel Channel HD as an example. I should get both, but don't. I do get ESPN1/2 HD, History HD, etc. Seems weird.

In the conditional access menu, I get

Encryption: DES Con: Yes EBCP: Yes Val:V 0x07 -- BTW, that's all the screen says on these channels I'm not getting. It says more on the channels I do get.

I'm pretty sure the guy called in the CableCard ID and not serial. I have the work order of the numbers he wrote down to call in. They also match.

When I go into the Channels menu, and select cable strength all the channels I get are 100, and the ones I don't but should are 0. Also, SNR in diagnostics is 35, which seem fine as I under stand it. I tried pull the CableCard and reinserting, no luck. I tried rebooting the Tivo, no luck. I redid the guide setup. I also tried a different splitter in the basement, and also tried an amp.

Are all your Digital Preferred channels missing, but Digital Starter channels are all present? If that's the case they may just have your CableCARD provisioned for the wrong lineup.

In any case I would call Comcast repair and see what they say. They may be able to fix it remotely by resending a signal to the CARD.

No, the channels are kind of all over the place. I called Tivo and they ran through their stuff. They said the card probably isn't authorized to receive the individual channels. Either the card or somewhere needs to be updated to allow the channels I'm supposed to get. Most channels are HD, and most have a "new" next to them in the channel lineup card. So, there may be something to that, but don't really understand how it all works.

Basically it seems I get no signal on the channels I'm missing. In the Conditional Access screen, everything below the 3rd/Con: line is not there. I get no signal on the strength page, diagnostics flips QAM, no lock, no signal. When I tune to a channel I do get, everything looks fine... i get the full Access screen and all read-outs seem in line with how they should be.

I called Comcast and tried to get someone who could help. They first sent me to Business Services, and he sent me back to tech support and got no where. He just said it's been escalated to level 2, and whenever someone gets around to looking at it something may happen. They said there's no one else to talk to until that happens or the tech shows up.

I'm not sure where you're located, but this sounds like a good example of the differences you can get dealing with Comcast depending on what part of the country you're in.

Other than trying to get my billing correct for the CableCARDs (which I'm still dealing with) my calls to Comcast have usually ended up with someone in repair that understood my problem (with lineups etc.) and was able to help me. The fact that this is the week between Christmas and New Years probably doesn't help your situation because they no doubt have a lot of people (tech support and otherwise) on vacation. If their vacation is picked by seniority it's a double-whammy because the most experienced are the ones that are off.

I'm in Lansing, MI. I called the main 800-comcast line and that's who I got. We'll see I guess who comes out and what they can do tomorrow. I at least have something to show them in the Condition Access menu and case numbers at Comcast and Tivo.

I've been dealing with a tech quite a bit on some line noise issues that are only affecting my internet/phone. And boy do they hate Cablecard installs! In particular, he was complaining about the step where it upgrades after you plug it in. Apparently that has a really high failure rate, and takes 15-20 minutes even when it works, and doesn't really fail when it doesn't -- it just never finishes. So they can easily waste 30-40 minutes on a card that ends up not working. And who knows, maybe the card is actually good but the problem is on the Comcast network end, but they don't want to waste another 30 minutes, so they mark it as defective and try another.

So, we live in a large apartment complex (MDU) where our cable bill is paid by our association dues. We have a HDTV and get channels 1-99 plus some HD over the air channels that show up with weird numbers like 10-1 (for NBC-HD).

Just over a month ago we got a HD-Tivo plus a 3 year service membership.

We were told then that we could get a comcast cablecard to allow us to receive additional HD channels (for a $2/month fee plus installation) and that would also make the over-the-air HD channels a "normal" number so our tivo could recognize them and we could record them automatically.

However, the comcast tech today told us we were misinformation. There is no "MDU cablecard". He said our options were to get a comcast high def receiver (for about $12/month) but that would make our tivo completely useless, or a comcast HD-DVR for $32/month. That would be okay, if we didn't just spend $550 on the HD-Tivo and 3 year service plan!

So, the wife is pissed and doesn't want to spend an extra $32/month so I'm in the doghouse. We have a great setup, but I want to be able to watch sports and record in HD.

We were told then that we could get a comcast cablecard to allow us to receive additional HD channels (for a $2/month fee plus installation) and that would also make the over-the-air HD channels a "normal" number so our tivo could recognize them and we could record them automatically.

However, the comcast tech today told us we were misinformation. There is no "MDU cablecard". He said our options were to get a comcast high def receiver (for about $12/month) but that would make our tivo completely useless, or a comcast HD-DVR for $32/month. That would be okay, if we didn't just spend $550 on the HD-Tivo and 3 year service plan!

Eh, on the one hand, there is no such thing as an "MDU CableCard" or a "Comcast Cablecard."

On the other hand, there *are* just CableCards. M-type (multistream), and S-type (single-stream). For your TivoHD, you need either one M-type, or two S-types.

I find with Comcast that if you use big words or techie words, especially inaccurate ones or ones that are out of context, they will tell you things like "no, the earth is flat, except for those who pay us more money, so that our devices can make it round on a per-outlet basis, so that I have served you better even though you don't know it yet." This sounds like what may have happened to you.

I would call them back, tell them that you have a Tivo, and you need CableCards. If you are daring, you can try to have an M-type vs. S-type talk with them, but you may explode the brain of the person on the other side.

Good luck.

__________________
I have a TivoHD with 1TB of storage. Don't make me use it.

I just got my cablecard from Comcast today, they let me pick it up rather than requiring a truck roll which surprised me. However I almost immediately ran into problems.

I've already completed guided setup without the cablecard, and the tivo has gotten the latest software updates. But when I insert the cablecard it goes to the cablecard screen, after a moment it updates to show it's an M-card, and then...nothing. I never get a screen showing the info I need to give to comcast. After waiting for a while I went to the cablecard pairing screen and it has a message saying "Information not available".

Does it sound like I got a bad card? Was something not done right at the comcast office when they issued me the card? Did I miss something?

The card is a Motorola.

*edit* Update: Spoke with both Tivo and Comcast, Tivo confirmed that the card was receiving signals from the headend, but were unable to do much else and advised I contact Comcast and see if they could do some sort of initialization and channel push with just the serial number. Called Comcast and the guy I talked to seemed fairly knowledgeable about setting these up for Tivo's, but with no pairing info there wasn't too much he could do. He did attempt to use the SN to push something to the card, then had me reboot the tivo, but no change. He recommended I try getting another cablecard, which was sort of the conclusion I'd been coming to anyhow.

My question is...can we use this box with the unencrypted QAM channels, without a cable card, and will it map them correctly with guide data? If not, I'll cancel the cable and go OTA, but I was hoping to keep the cable so we can also get the discovery channel, which we have always enjoyed. Please advise.
Thanks.

Haven't run the Tivo with comcast, but I suspect it's like knology in that you will get the QAMs, but they won't provide the data, so thye can push their service.
You can combine the two though and use and OTA antenna for locals in HD, and keep the cable for the discovery and such. Tivo will then provide programing data for the HD locals and the regular cable.
Just go into set up then and turn off the redundant local channels from cable.

The second comcast tech came today. We looked into the HD channels I should be getting per the channel line up and said I needed to get a specal HD package, although there isn't any listed on their site. He called someone and said I needed Triple Play package to get the HD or something. They also said the only way to get HD channels I needed a cable box. They wouldn't do anything about the channels I couldn't get.

This is all ******** and told him to take the card back. Now I have to fight with them over the install charge.

The second comcast tech came today. We looked into the HD channels I should be getting per the channel line up and said I needed to get a specal HD package, although there isn't any listed on their site. He called someone and said I needed Triple Play package to get the HD or something. They also said the only way to get HD channels I needed a cable box. They wouldn't do anything about the channels I couldn't get.

This is all ******** and told him to take the card back. Now I have to fight with them over the install charge.

Unreal.

When you get to this sort of situation, the best thing to do is to stop trying to deal with the local people and go through Comcast corporate who will find a local person for you who actually has a clue, and that also will most likely generate some pressure on the other local people to actually learn what products they sell.

I know it's annoying to have to train the people working for companies you want to buy product from, but hey, it could be worse!

The second comcast tech came today. We looked into the HD channels I should be getting per the channel line up and said I needed to get a specal HD package, although there isn't any listed on their site. He called someone and said I needed Triple Play package to get the HD or something. They also said the only way to get HD channels I needed a cable box. They wouldn't do anything about the channels I couldn't get.

This is all ******** and told him to take the card back. Now I have to fight with them over the install charge.

Unreal.

I AGREE with Doug 100%

What Territory are you IN - This is the Craziest Comcast Story I have
heard on this THREAD. Saying you have to buy triple play to get HD is
actually AGAINST the LAW.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dswallow

When you get to this sort of situation, the best thing to do is to stop trying to deal with the local people and go through Comcast corporate who will find a local person for you who actually has a clue, and that also will most likely generate some pressure on the other local people to actually learn what products they sell.

I know it's annoying to have to train the people working for companies you want to buy product from, but hey, it could be worse!

In my area, if you visit the Comcast website and look up the Digital Starter and Digital Preferred channel lineups, they are identical. Line for line.

So I tried to find out why I wasn't getting FX HD (on either my Tivo *or* my Comcast HD DVR), which is listed in both packages (I have Preferred, the higher tier of the two). Let me tell you how this unfolded.

Before you read this, I didn't talk to them about the Tivo, either. Just the Comcast box. I know better than to talk Tivo to them.

- Email to Comcast, noting the identical channel lineups on the website, was replied to with a statement that I might not have the right package, and I should contact someone to get upgraded.

- Live chat with Comcast resulted in being told that I needed to downgrade - you heard it, downgrade - from Digital Preferred to Digital Starter to get FX HD.

- Phone call to Comcast resulted in: (1) "oh your device must need resetting, power it down, I will hit the box, blah blah blah." (2) "oh the reset didn't work, you must have an equipment problem, I will schedule someone to come out and find out what is wrong with your equipment. (3) Guy arrives. Looks at channels. Says "we haven't upgraded this area to Comcast World Of More yet, I can tell by the channels you're getting."

See, I wanted to know what the lineup differences were between Digital Starter and Digital Preferred. Because Comcast annoyed me with all the run around, and if all I care about is what's on Starter, I'm downgrading pronto.

- Here's a snippet of the online chat session.

Quote:

(Comcast guy): Digital Starter package has over 80 digital cable channels, access to thousands of movies and shows each month–most free–ready to play as you please with On Demand. 45 commercial-free music channels, from Top 40 to classical to hip-hop, local programming and all the popular cable channels. On-screen program guide.

(Me): I need to know what the specific differences are in the channel lineups between the two packages. According to the Comcast website, the channel lineups are identical. Despite the differences in the general descriptions and channel counts, the channel listings are the same.

(Comcast guy): Digital Preferred package 100+ digital cable channels, access to over 10,000 movies and shows each month–most free–ready to play as you please with On Demand. 45 commercial-free music channels, from Top 40 to classical to hip-hop. Local programming and all the popular cable channels. Easy parental controls that help keep your family safe. On-screen program guide.

To his credit, the Comcast guy finally got me my answer (which, by the way, is apparently not on a customer-accessible page). Along the way, he noted that he was "having a difficult time looking for the channel line up of Digital Preferred." Sounded familiar.

Resolution time: about 1 hour.

Uh, wait. He didn't actually give me any details on the HD channels, now that I look at the list.

Revised resolution time: Not resolved.

All that said, your original comment? They don't know their own channel lineups? No. They do not.

__________________
I have a TivoHD with 1TB of storage. Don't make me use it.

On my channel lineup they left behind dated 11/09, FXHD, for example, is listed under Digital Starter HD. Next to that there's a * footnote that says Digital Starter is required to receive Digital Starter HD.

The way I read it, is if I have Preferred, I should be getting Starter HD and Classic HD. If I get the top Premium, I should get the Premium HD. Maybe too all the sports and family tiers I'm not getting.

It actually isn't against the law. You're simply mistaken. You can continue to insist that it is illegal, but unless you can cite the law which makes it illegal, you're blowing smoke. I wish you luck in your search, but please understand that I've warned you that there is no such law, so your search will be fruitless.

In addition, however, I think we can rest assured that this is a misunderstanding and that they're not categorically requiring Triple Play in order to be able to get HD.

On my channel lineup they left behind dated 11/09, FXHD, for example, is listed under Digital Starter HD. Next to that there's a * footnote that says Digital Starter is required to receive Digital Starter HD.

The way I read it, is if I have Preferred, I should be getting Starter HD and Classic HD. If I get the top Premium, I should get the Premium HD. Maybe too all the sports and family tiers I'm not getting.

I'm calling Saturday to find out for my own sanity.

Well, I just re-edited my post; the guy actually didn't give me detail on the HD channels. Sucks. However, I *think* -- can't prove -- that if you get the SD version of a channel, and an HD version exists in the lineup, you're going to get the HD version too. And I believe FX SD is on both tiers.

Here's what he said the differences were. The following channels are in Preferred but not Starter in my area.

In addition, however, I think we can rest assured that this is a misunderstanding and that they're not categorically requiring Triple Play in order to be able to get HD.

I AGREE 100% - that somewhere there is a misunderstanding. Someone
made a mistake in saying what was implied. I'm sure almost anyone at
Comcast would retract the implied statement in a second if it was made
by someone at Comcast.

Divesture and unbundling services has been in place since 1984. Yes any
service provider can offer bundles to make their services more attractive
and Consumers have the freedom to make their choice. What was implied
was that the consumer had to buy two NON-RELATED services, Telephony
and Internet Service to GET HD TV channels.

AGAIN - I agree with you - there is a misunderstanding somewhere. But
if there was NO misunderstanding - then that kind of bundling is illegal.
That is worse than BAIT and SWITCH - and are you going to say that is
NOT ILLEGAL also.

Well, I have been on the phone with Comcast on and off for three hours now, hung up on once, and bounced across four different people. They scheduled an appointment for me three days from now without bothering to tell me about it, which figures, and they don't want to talk to me about the problem.

What I *did* find out is that CableCard #2 is set up in their system for "basic" rather than the digital starter/preferred tier (unlike CableCard #1), and they are apparently going to fix this by sending someone to the house.

The last person I spoke with gave me the I-don't-know-what-a-manager is dance after telling me first that the setup of the cards is identical, and then telling me that she doesn't have access to the system that would tell her whether the setup of the cards is identical. Ha ha ha... more to come.

EDIT: No path to resolution until at least morning. But I got a manager involved who seems to have a clue.

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I have a TivoHD with 1TB of storage. Don't make me use it.